1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a remote commander for use as an operating device for various electronic appliances such as a television monitor, a disk player, a video tape player and an air conditioner.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A remote commander has been put into practical use and is employed widely in recent years and is normally constructed such that a particular command signal is generated in response to depression of a key thereon and then converted into an infrared ray signal by means of, for example, a light emitting diode and such infrared ray signal is supplied to a remote electronic appliance such as a monitor unit to operate the same in a desired manner.
A plurality of operation keys are normally provided on such remote commander and constructed as a keyboard which includes a plurality of depressible keys. However, another arrangement is also known wherein a plurality of operation keys are constructed as a touch panel operating section which makes use of an LCD (liquid crystal display) display screen and touch sensors.
Such touch panel operating section is normally constructed such that operation keys are displayed on an LCD display screen and if a surface of the touch panel is depressed in accordance with the displays of the operation keys, then it is detected by means of touch sensors at which location the LCD display screen is depressed and then a command signal is generated corresponding to the operation key displayed at the depressed location of the LCD display screen.
However, since the surface of such LCD display screen is flat, the operation keys provided on the LCD display screen are distinguished only based on the images displayed on the LCD display screen, and consequently, it is not easy for a user of the touch panel operating section to perform accurate operation of the operation keys.
In particular, since the operation keys of such LCD display screen have no such uneven or convex and concave profiles as do operation keys of an ordinary keyboard which includes depressible switches, it often occurs that an adjacent operation key is depressed in error. Accordingly, there is a problem that, since a user cannot confirm, after a finger has been removed from the touch panel, which operation key has just been operated, even if the electronic appliance operates in a different manner from what the user wanted to select, a cause of such operation cannot be recognized, or in some cases, various operations may take place continuously while the user does not notice the operation in error, which will result in erroneous operation of the electronic appliance.